Welcome to Guidance, Private Sanctuary’s source for tips and techniques for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, written by Everyman Gamer Alexander Augunas. Today, we’re going to be looking at an Iconic Design for Sailor Moon.

It’s been a few weeks coming, but I always make good on my promises! To counteract my Ultimate 8-Year-Old Boy Build (also called primal hunter with a winged, three-handed, fire-breathing T-Rex), we’re going to look at a Meatball Head for the ladies.

Let’s get to it!

Background

From Viz.com, because I’m lazy.

Usagi Tsukino is a clumsy but kindhearted teenage girl who transforms into the powerful guardian of love and justice, Sailor Moon. Meeting allies along the way who share similar fates, Usagi and her team of planetary Sailor Guardians fight to protect the universe from forces of evil and total annihilation.

Well then. Let’s get started.

Build Concept

In order to make Sailor Moon, we’re going to need the following pieces:

• Half-Elf. Specifically, I need a race with low-light vision to qualify for a feat that I have in mind and I think half-elf fits the best. Mostly because elves are “special.”
• Warpriest: Sailor Moon’s signature move is to take a tiara off of her head, transform it into a discus, and hurl it at enemies to destroy them. If I’m going to maximize on the single-attack nature of Sailor Moon, I’m going to need the Vital Strike chain as well as the warpriest’s sacred weapon mechanic in order to increase the tiara’s damage. Not to mention that as the prime example of a “Magic Girl,” Sailor Moon needs some magical spells at her disposal. None of the archetypes are particularly appropriate for her (though I flirted with cult leader for a bit for the LoLs), so we’ll be looking at a straight warpriest build this time. No multiclassing, no archetypes. Just you, me, Usagi, and the warpriest class.

Early Levels (1–7)

• Classes: Warpriest 7
• Feats: Weapon Focus: chakram (Bonus), Point-Blank Shot (1st), Precise Shot (Bonus), Blind-Fight (3rd), Combat Expertise (5th), Vital Strike (Bonus), Moonlight Stalker (7th)
• Abilities: channel energy, fervor 2d6, focus weapon, minor blessings (darkness), sacred armor +1, sacred weapon +1

Okay! Let’s talk about this build. Sailor Moon’s heart and soul is going to lie in attacks made with her thrown tiara, which we’re going to call a chakram for the purpose of this build. Yeah, its more of a discus, but the chakram is the closest thing to a thrown disc that I can currently get in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. By selecting it as Sailor Moon’s focus weapon, her damage with her thrown disc will slowly increase. Furthermore, she’ll be able to enhance it with her sacred weapon class feature to make her attack even more powerful.

I choose a warpriest with the darkness blessing for this build for two reasons. First, in Pathfinder, the Moon domain is a subdomain of darkness and second, the minor blessing of the darkness blessing reminded me of something out of a Sailor Moon episode; instead of darkness, picture magic girl sparkles and moonlight shining all other the place. Now, this blessing power has a very interesting interaction with the Moonlight Stalker feat, which grants you a +2 bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls against any creatures that suffer a concealment chance when making attacks against you. So essentially, when you pop your minor darkness blessing you’ll ultimately get a 20% miss chance on attacks made against you as well as a +2 bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls against your enemies. As for Sailor Moon’s second blessing, that’s really a matter of personal preference. Since she’s the iconic Magic Girl character, I’d prefer to give her the magic blessing myself, but that minor blessing is pretty useless for her build. (Though the major blessing for the magic blessing is much more powerful to make up for it.) If I had to pick a second choice, it would be Nobility.

Most of the early levels go to setting up this boost for the blessing, so there really isn’t much else to see here.

Mid Levels (8 –14)

• Classes: Warpriest 14
• Feats: Weapon Focus: chakram (Bonus), Point-Blank Shot (1st), Precise Shot (Bonus), Blind-Fight (3rd), Combat Expertise (5th), Vital Strike (Bonus), Moonlight Stalker (7th), Weapon of the Chosen (Bonus), Close Quarters Thrower (9th), Improved Weapon of the Chosen (11th), Improved Vital Strike (Bonus), Greater Weapon of the Chosen (13th)
• Abilities: channel energy, fervor 5d6, focus weapon, major blessings (darkness + 1), sacred armor +3, sacred weapon +3

Now I don’t know about you, but when I think of Sailor Moon attacking, I think of her making her one, big signature attack with her favored weapon. So while that’s not the most optimal strategy in Pathfinder, that’s how I’m going to build her too. In the early stage of the game, my final feat for Sailor Moon was Vital Strike, and for good reason. As Sailor Moon gets more and more damage dice, getting to roll more of them every round is going to be FUN. Optimal? No. But fun? Yes.

In order to further hammer her specialization with the chakram home, I’m also picking up the Weapon of the Chosen feat line. Although the first feat isn’t very useful, Improved Weapon of the Chosen essentially amounts to an always-on ability to overcome damage reduction as though Sailor Moon’s weapon were holy. That’s really, really nice. By the end of this stretch, Sailor Moon also gets Greater Weapon of the Chosen, which allows her to roll her attack roll with her favored weapon twice and use the better result. Since we’re riding all of Sailor Moon’s damage potential on one, big attack roll with Vital Strike this is actually a pretty awesome combo.

Speaking of Vital Strike, one of the nice parts about the warpriest is that he always uses its class level as its base attack bonus when determining if he meets a bonus feat’s prerequisites in addition to using his warpriest level as a fighter level for that same purpose. In short, the warpriest gets to pick up Improved Vital Strike at 11th level, the same time a fighter could have otherwise grabbed it, which is very helpful to this build. Vital Strike becomes downright powerful for the warpriest when you stop to remember this fun fact: as a medium BAB class that uses its level as a fighter level, a warpriest can essentially give up three attacks (a full attack) to multiply its weapon damage dice by x4 (as per Greater Vital Strike). As a result, the warpriest is the only class that can realistically outdamage its own full attack damage rate using Vital Strike, especially with the sacred weapon damage progression.

With all this in mind, let’s see how it all wraps up at the end game.

Endgame (15+)

• Classes: Warpriest 20
• Feats: Weapon Focus: chakram (Bonus), Point-Blank Shot (1st), Precise Shot (Bonus), Blind-Fight (3rd), Combat Expertise (5th), Vital Strike (Bonus), Moonlight Stalker (7th), Weapon of the Chosen (Bonus), Close Quarters Thrower (9th), Improved Weapon of the Chosen (11th), Improved Vital Strike (Bonus), Greater Weapon of the Chosen (13th), Weapon Specialization: chakram (Bonus), Point-Blank Master (15th), Devastating Strike (17th), Greater Vital Strike (Bonus), Deadly Aim (19th)
• Abilities: aspect of war, channel energy, fervor 6d6, focus weapon, major blessings (darkness + 1), sacred armor +5, sacred weapon +5

Are you surprised that the final feat that I recommend in this build is Deadly Aim? This build takes a LONG time to set up its core bonuses and while there’s some leeway, I think that the neat tricks (Moonlight Stalker, Weapon of the Chosen) are more important than the build’s more generic choices. If you want Deadly aim earlier, my recommendation would be to swap Deadly Aim (19th level) with Point-Blank Master (15th level). In the end, your damage looks like this:

• Chakram Damage: 8d8. 2d8 base, thanks to sacred weapon, multiplied by 4 thanks to Greater Vital Strike.
• Damage Modifiers: Strength + 1 (Point-Blank Shot) + 2 (Moonlight Stalker) + 2 (Weapon Specialization) + 6 (Devastating Strike) + 8 (Deadly Aim) + sacred weapon = 19 + sacred weapon + Strength.

Is this the most ridiculous damage I’ve ever shown you? No, but do remember that this is on one attack that isn’t limited in number of uses per day, and if you miss you can roll twice and use the better roll (a la Greater Weapon of the Chosen).

Mythic

See my Slaying Sanctified article; this build can benefit as much from my Vital Strike augmentation tactics as much as that build does, if not more so because Sailor Moon can actually grab Greater Vital Strike. And honestly, if anyone deserves to be mythic its Sailor Moon.

And that’s all I have to say about Sailor Moon! What did you think? Is this a build that you’d use, or is it too Vital Strike focused for your liking? Anything that I missed that you feel is essential for a good Sailor Moon build? Should I do more builds for the other Sailor Scouts? Leave your answers and comments below and tune back in on Wednesday for ANOTHER ICONIC DESIGN! Long live Christmas!

Alexander “Alex” Augunas has been playing roleplaying games since 2007, which isn’t nearly as long as 90% of his colleagues. Alexander is an active freelancer for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and is best known as the author of the Pact Magic Unbound series by Radiance House. Alex is the owner of Everyman Gaming, LLC and is often stylized as the Everyman Gamer in honor of Guidance’s original home. Alex’s favorite color is blue, his favorite Pathfinder Race/Class combination is kitsune sailor scout, although having a tail in that short skirt could be a real nuisance.